Chickens are in the news today. Jimbo’s girlfriend was telling him a story she heard on the news of an overturned truck and its load of chickens which were loose and scampering about the highway, as dazed chickens are prone to do, creating all sorts of havoc. Her storytelling was in response to my telling her I had read a story about chickens, and I asked if she had read it. Her story was entertaining, but my story was strange. It goes like this.
A guy in Colorado, where the men are men and the chickens are flightless fowl, was riding heard on his chickens when he found one of them had fallen into a tub of water. The chicken appeared to have drowned. The chicken herder then swung the chicken in the air to try to revive it, something all of us would have done if presented with the same dilemma, I am sure. When swinging the chicken around failed to bring it back to life, he tried the remedy that, I’m sure, all of us would have tried next: he gave it mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. He also did what all of us would have done in that he shouted to the chicken that it was too young to die, between times when he was administering the “kiss of life.”
I’m happy to report that the chicken survived and will lead a fruitful life and eventually graduate to the highest honor we can bestow onto a chicken. That is, he can someday be a Buffalo wing or, if he is a real team player, become a member of a bucket of Colonel Sanders’ Chicken. Perhaps, if the chicken were female, it would someday lay an egg that would rise to the highest nirvanic state of eggdom and be used to make Jimbo’s famous omelet. I believe it was Plato who said that life without Jimbo’s omelet was not worth living, but for any of you who are new readers and may have missed my recipe; it can be obtained at the following address.
http://jimboandhisfriends.blogspot.com/2004/11/jimbos-omelet-bon-vivants-guide.html
However, whenever you read a story like this, it is important to remember that someone could be making up the whole thing. It might just be a human-interest story to enliven an otherwise slow news day.
From here, however, the story gets weirder. It goes on to tell the tale of Mike the chicken who was beheaded in Colorado in 1945 and survived. I’m sure many of you are going to remind me of the song by Warren Zevon, Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner, an epic tale of a mercenary who also lost his head, but survived. You may also recall in that song there was some hint of CIA involvement, and perhaps some money was passed under the table resulting in the following line from the song.
“That sonofabitch Van Owen blew off Roland’s head.”
In the case of Mike, it appears the motivation was strictly dinner. However, after he lost his head, Mike survived a year and a half, his owner feeding him by putting food directly into his gullet and giving him water the same way, with an eyedropper. The story goes on to say that Mike was a popular attraction and that scientists examined him at the time. Of course, back then, science hadn’t come as far as it has now.
I envision that the scientists evaluated him and said to his owner, “Yes sir, mister, the damn thing ain’t got a head.”
Mike eventually met his demise in another senseless chicken-choking incident, when he choked to death on a kernel of corn. We assume at that point Mike met a frying pan and his haunted tale ended, unlike Roland, whom we understand still to be wandering the earth.
“They can still see his headless body stalking through the night
In the muzzle-flash of Roland’s Thomson gun.”
Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, or some fiction is stranger than other fiction, depending on what truth or fiction you believe.
Here in Jimbo’s world sometimes only seeing is believing.
No comments:
Post a Comment